Science Communication is one way academics can apply themselves outside of academia. But how does one transition between careers? I talked with Dr. Deboki Chakravarti, a biomedical engineer who worked on cancer treatments.

At the end of November 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he had genetically modified human embryos which were then brought to term. The resulting twin sisters appear to be healthy. But this experiment was not greeted with enthusiasm by ...

I talked with Dr. Nuno Henrique Franco about animal welfare in scientific research. The questions we address are Why do we do animal experiments?What can be done to reduce the amount of animal experiments?

Once a month I sit down with my friend and co-host Bart Geurten. We talk about things within and around academia, and exchange opinions on earlier episodes. In this episode, we first talk about the concept of overlay journals in the context of the n...

While the number of PhD graduates per year is rising worldwide, the number of proper long-term or permanent positions in academia isn't. This leaves PhDs with ever decreasing chances of staying in academia.

This episode is the first 'Q&A' episode, where my new co-host Dr. Bart Geurten (see episode 8) and I talk about what's new in academia. Our conversations are free form and may lead us astray here and there.

Plant geneticists are not happy with the European judgement on gene editing Dr. Hélène Pidon is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research. She searches for genes that give plants resistance to disease...

Just some announcements this time In contrast to what was promised in the last podcast episode, we don't have a full question and answer episode this time. I hope this will not happen too often, in future. Dennis is a freelancer now.

What is the Journal Impact Factor? The Journal Impact Factor is widely used as a tool to evaluate studies, and researchers. It supposedly measures the quality of a journal by scoring how many citations an average article in this journal achieves.

The brain uses heuristics, short-cuts in thinking, to speed up decision making. But this also leads to systematic mistakes, so called 'cognitive biases'.